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T. C. Chao (1888–1979) was a leading Chinese Protestant theologian renowned for his creative works of Chinese theology. Although scholars have traced significant changes and shifts in Chao's theology in the 1940s, a particular formal aspect of his mature thinking has not received the attention it deserves. Chao began to emphasise and practise a particular form of Chinese theology in the 1940s and early 1950s, namely, doctrinal or dogmatic theology. This paper traces the development of Chao's dogmatic theology and examines one representative dogmatic locus in his thinking, the doctrine of the Trinity. It argues that Chao's turn to dogmatics not only richly illuminates a crucial aspect of his mature life and thought, but also sheds light on the legacy of Andrew Walls, whose work highlights Christianity's cross-cultural diffusion and the gospel's encounter with the cultural worlds it takes root within. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper elucidates the pragmatist elements of Thomas Reid's approach to the justification of first principles by reference to Charles S. Peirce. Peirce argues that first principles are justified by their surviving a process of 'self-criticism', in which we come to appreciate that we cannot bring ourselves to doubt these principles, in addition to the foundational role they play in inquiries. The evidence Reid allows first principles bears resemblance to surviving the process of self-criticism. I then argue that this evidence allows Reid and Peirce a way out of the dilemma between dogmatism and skepticism regarding the justification of such principles, insofar as they are epistemically, and not solely practically, justified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The common sense that heavily informs the epistemology of Thomas Reid has been recently hailed as instructive with regard to some of the most fundamental issues in epistemology by a burgeoning segment of analytic epistemologists. These admirers of Reid may be called dogmatists. I highlight three ways in which Reid's approach has been a model to be imitated in the estimation of dogmatists. First, common sense propositions are taken to be the benchmarks of epistemology inasmuch as they constitute paradigm cases of knowledge. Second, dogmatists follow Reid in taking common sense propositions to provide boundaries for philosophical theorizing. Inasmuch as philosophical theorizing leads one to deny a common sense proposition, such theorizing is stepping outside of the bounds of what it can or should do. Third, dogmatists follow Reid in focusing heavily on the problem of skepticism and by responding to it by refusing to answer the demand for a meta-justification that the skeptic wants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]